cadet blogs

As the semester is winding down, my eye is on the prize and that is winter leave. While at the Academy or anywhere as a matter of fact, it is important to set short term goals or things to look forward to. For example, I know that there is a federal holiday once a month so we have a long weekend that often. Furthermore, I have all the federal holidays memorized by name and what month they are in; it’s just a little something I look forward to every month to keep me sane. Right now my motivation is getting to winter leave, even if there is a lot of work, tests, papers etc. in the way. For whatever reason, it seems like teachers pack all big projects and papers toward the end of the semester so it can get hectic at times. Some cadets may describe Chase Hall (the dorms) as a very dark place, but during the holidays, I think even with all the work, there is a vibrant air that floats around.

Something else that I look forward to weekly is watching the Eagles play on Sunday. For all you sports fans out there game day/night in whatever sport you may enjoy spectating is a great way to get your mind away from all the work at the Academy. Since you can’t sleep at all during the week (6 a.m. wake up) except on Sundays, I generally wake up at 12 or 1 on Sundays and then turn on some football. Since we only get local cable on TV, you have to watch some games on the internet. But cadets aren’t allowed TVs in their rooms so people watch TV in one of the eight communal rooms in Chase Hall. I know a lot of cadets that enjoy watching TV and own a subscription to either Netflix or their parents own a cable service that allows them to watch local channels on their computer. Along with not having TVs, we are also not allowed to have fridges, couches, microwaves or anything of that sort in our rooms. Those things I listed are nice commodities, but they are things that you can live without. Especially since the food at the Academy is outstanding and there is plenty of it. I can honestly say that I’ve never gone hungry while at the Academy; now at prep school it’s a different story because that food was awful. I’ve eaten at a couple of college cafeterias with my friends and they were not as good as the Academy. And on top of that Academy food is FREE! So you can’t beat that anywhere else. The Coast Guard Academy is also ranked #1 for best food out of all the other service academies and after talking to Coast Guard cadets that went on exchange to a different academy for a semester, they say that the thing that they missed most from our Academy was the food.